People of Salcete, Mormugao express concern over restricted water supply
The people of Salcete and Mormugao have expressed concern that the celebrations of festivals of Easter and Holi would be affected due to the restricted water supply in the next two days following the high manganese content found in the water of Salaulim dam on Thursday.
The PWD has restricted water supply in order to clean up the water filters at the dam to flush out the manganese found beyond the permissible limit.
However, the engineers said that they would take care to overcome the problem soon.
“Today, things are improving. The manganese content came down at 10 a.m. on Friday to 1.3 from 1.5. We are controlling the situation. Hourly monitoring and testing of water for manganese will be done at the dam,’’ stated, Mr S R Paranjape, executive engineer, public works division XII.
Mr Paranjape further said that with the manganese content in Salaulim dam water, perhaps for the first time in this season, the filtration has slowed downed and as a result, the production has came down to 180/181 MLD from 192 MLD. He said that all efforts are being taken to normalise the situation.
“Till the manganese content comes down to a permissible limit, the water has to be judiciously distributed so that the people are not affected,’’ he said.
He stated that his division only looks after the production, whereas the distribution of the water is being done to the South Goa people by works division IX and XX. The executive engineer of works division IX, Mr P Fatarpekar, however, promised to distribute the water
equally.
“We will take care to distribute the water equally to all. We will see that people of Salcete and Mormugao will not be affected,’’ he stated while speaking to this on Friday. Mr Fatarpekar is taking care of these two talukas – Salcete and Mormugao.
The Salcete taluka is supplied around 75 MLD water even though the requirement is 10 MLD more. The Mormugao taluka requires 65 MLD of water.
“At the most water will be restricted for two hours. We will adjust it in such a way that people of Salcete and Mormugao would not feel that water was restricted to them. Areas at higher levels will be taken into account while distributing the water,’’ added Mr Fatarpekar. [NT]